Published by Bernard Jacobson Gallery.Text by Sam Cornish.

Robert Motherwell (1915–91) was a major figure in the birth and development of Abstract Expressionism and the youngest member of the "New York School," a term he coined. His career spanned five decades during which time he created some of the most iconic images of the twentieth century. Robert Motherwell: Works on Paper was published to accompany an exhibition dedicated exclusively to the artist's works on paper. In his extensive essay, Sam Cornish discusses drawings from the Lyric Suite, a group of works from the Beside the Sea series and a selection of works based upon James Joyce's Ulysses. Further main themes in the artist's oeuvre are covered, from the 1940s to the 1980s, including Elegy and Je t'aime as well as automatism drawings and work from the Drunk with Turpentine, Gesture and Open series.

Published by Bernard Jacobson Gallery.Text by Mel Gooding.

A number of Robert Motherwell’s most important early works were collage-paintings, beginning with his first effort in the spring of 1943, “Pierrot’s Hat,” made while working alongside Jackson Pollock in the latter’s studio. “I took to collage like a duck to water,” Motherwell later reflected, and he continued to “play with papers” for the rest of his life, esteeming his skill in the medium as one of his “chief gifts.” Collage also helped the artist reconcile his relationship to European modernism (particularly Surrealism) on the one hand, and American Abstract Expressionism on the other. Reproducing a concise selection of collages from throughout the artist’s career in full color, this volume also includes a series of “case studies” on individual collages and broader essays by critic Mel Gooding that examine their composition, palette and literary allusions, and Motherwell’s unique position bridging Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

Robert Motherwell: Early Collages, published to accompany an exhibition devoted exclusively to Motherwell’s works on paper from the 1940s and early 1950s, reexamines the origins of the artist’s style and his revelatory encounter with the papier collé technique that he described in 1944 as “the greatest of our discoveries.” Motherwell’s enthusiasm for and dedication to the collage medium for the remainder of his career sets him apart from other artists of his generation and extended beyond the mere physical presence of pasted cut-and-torn papers. Featuring approximately 60 works and four essays that delve into artists’ engagements with collage in the first half of the twentieth century, Motherwell’s early career with patron Peggy Guggenheim, underlying humanitarian themes during World War II and the artist’s materials, Early Collages provides a vital reassessment of Motherwell’s work in the collage medium.Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) studied painting at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, at Stanford, Harvard and Columbia. His first solo show was presented at the Raymond Duncan Gallery in Paris in 1939. In 1941, Motherwell traveled to Mexico with Roberto Matta. After returning to New York, his circle came to include William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann and Jackson Pollock. In 1944, Motherwell became editor of the Documents of Modern Art series of books, and participated in Fourteen Americans at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1946. The artist subsequently taught and lectured throughout the United States. A retrospective of his works organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, traveled throughout the United States from 1983 to 1985.

Robert Motherwell, who died in 1991, was the youngest member of the first wave of Abstract Expressionists known as the New York School (a phrase he coined), which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman. An articulate writer, Motherwell was pegged early on as the intellectual of the group. Robert Motherwell: Open is the first examination of the painter's Open series, which preoccupied him from 1967 until the last years of his life. Pared down and minimal, these paintings differ greatly from his more dynamic and monumental Elegies series, for which he is perhaps best known. Containing many previously unpublished paintings as well as works in public collections, this monograph--the most comprehensive and best-illustrated book on Motherwell currently in print--introduces a series of texts by critics and art historians John Yau, Robert Hobbs, Matthew Collings, Donald Kuspit, Robert Mattison, Mel Gooding and Saul Ostrow.